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Author
Topic: when do you think there will be a cure for HIV? (Read 15749 times)

I will have you know I am at a CD4 count of 240ish. Which I think now exempts me from needing regular prophylactic antibiotics. Also, I thought the VL count was not "proof" in and of itself? On that note I've been undetectable sinced about 6 months from starting meds.

a doctor giving you a diagnosis of being HIV+ and having a viral load is a pretty good way to know one has HIV. Just for the record, I never saw a piece of paper (or it never registered in my brain in 1992-93 if I was shown it), that stated I was HIV poz. I would imagine that a lot of doctors give out a lot of diagnoses about a lot of illnesses without ever showing the patient a piece of paper. Is there an underlying reason why you wouldn't believe the diagnosis your doctor gave you? If it concerns you, have you asked to see the result paper from the lab?

I'm not looking to put you on the spot or even get an answer from you. I was just throwing that out there since you expressed concern about your status even though a doctor gave you a diagnosis. I think if I were you, I'd take the easy solution to this and ask to clarify that all up at my next doctor appt, just to have it all straight in my head.

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leatherman (aka mIkIE)

All the stars are flashing high above the seaand the party is on fire around you and meWe're gonna burn this disco down before the morning comes- Pet Shop Boys chart from 1992-2015Isentress/Prezcobix

If you care to know, I am sure you can ask the nurse or doctor to show you a few pages of your lab results over the years and show you whats on them. Your doctors will know your genotype. Of the hiv virus that IS IN YOU and which is successfully repressed by your hiv medicine.

Once you get the name of the genotype, you could google it and find a good image, print it out and paste it somewhere in your apt and voila there's your piece of paper.

HIV is probably stamped all over all your medical records right now. Just have a peak.

How did we get onto this tangent again?

« Last Edit: November 23, 2012, 03:58:06 AM by mecch »

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“From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need” 1875 K Marx

Just this week here in Switzerland I was talking to a guy about 30 years old. He is HIV+ and was on treatment for a few years and now has gone off treatment because "there are many unanswered questions about the virus and the treatment" and, yeah, here it comes, told me all about how now he follows alternative treatment with a "naturopath" and about how his doctor was on board and yada yada yada and I thought, geez louise, 2012, and this shit is still happening.... Oh, yes, and Obama stole the election... And other myths we tell ourselves I dunno why, since we know its malarky.

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“From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need” 1875 K Marx

HIV is probably stamped all over all your medical records right now. Just have a peak.

I had to raise an eyebrow at this, too...but then maybe I'm just over-obsessive about details. Have you not ever seen - or asked for personal duplicates of - copies of any of your medical stuff? I'm just wondering because I've asked several times for print outs of papers related to my VL and counts, etc.

And on a side note about perhaps being over-obsessive: it's "peek", Mr. Educator.

There will be no cure because status quo (''chronic disease'') is more profitable for big pharma companies...

So I guess you also believea) There is no competition (free market powers) in the pharma/medical business.b) The holder of a cure would not make an enormous profit for years ahead ( possibly indefinitely) in patent rights.

so far as of right now nothing was confirmed from my specialist nothing as of now like to see a cure but nothing is in sight people hiv isn't a joke I just read a comment from someone that stopped taking his meds i'm on my 4th month I don't want to go through it

I will have you know I am at a CD4 count of 240ish. Which I think now exempts me from needing regular prophylactic antibiotics. Also, I thought the VL count was not "proof" in and of itself? On that note I've been undetectable sinced about 6 months from starting meds.

Gerrrrl, you thinking too much. Should I conclude that you stopped taking the antibiotics without ever consulting this with your physician or ID specialist? No, no, no, no.

And as the Swiss professor noted, you never get/request a copy of your labs? I'd expect better from someone who, IIRC, did his undergraduate studies in a scientific discipline.

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"I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else."

Just this week here in Switzerland I was talking to a guy about 30 years old. He is HIV+ and was on treatment for a few years and now has gone off treatment because "there are many unanswered questions about the virus and the treatment" and, yeah, here it comes, told me all about how now he follows alternative treatment with a "naturopath" and about how his doctor was on board and yada yada yada and I thought, geez louise, 2012, and this shit is still happening.... Oh, yes, and Obama stole the election... And other myths we tell ourselves I dunno why, since we know its malarky.

Obama didn't steal the election..He paid for it fair and square. He showed me the reciept.

I have to say though, I'm not sure what's so grim about it. We just need to stop these expectations about turning the tv on tomorrow and finding a flashing headline announcing that the cure for teh AIDS has been found. We've been hearing about "ten years" since 1985 or so. We have to be realistic.

One thing that I wanted to highlight from that article was the link towards the end discussing the Visconti Cohort, which should be of great interest to anyone who started treatment shortly after/during the initial stages of infection (i.e. yours truly). Some of the people in this study have been able to control the virus without meds for seven years (after being on them for three) in a way that's sort of similar to an elite controller.

It also provides some good insight/evidence when it comes to the discussion about how soon people should start meds.

A group of patients in France who became infected with HIV and then started on antiretroviral therapy (ART) early in the post-infection period have shown no signs of a resurgence of their HIV infection seven years after being taken off therapy."These results suggest that ... antiretroviral treatment should be started very early after infection," said Charline Bacchus, lead researcher of the study at the French National Agency for Research on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis (ANRS).The patients in the ANRS EP47 VISCONTI cohort (known as the Visconti Cohort) have an extremely low reservoir of HIV in their cells similar to that of "HIV controller" patients. HIV controllers are those who are able to control their HIV infection without the use of ART for an extended period of time, and represent about one out of every 300 people who have HIV.

In the study, 12 patients started therapy within 10 weeks of infection, were on therapy for an average of three years, and were able to control HIV after an average of seven years off therapy. At a press conference Asier Saez-Cirión, one of the study investigators, said they were interested in finding out whether HIV controller status could be induced. He estimated that 5-15% of those treated early could eventually control HIV off therapy. But don't stop those HIV meds just yet -- not only would we need to figure out how to identify who would have this type of response to early treatment, but also get those individuals onto treatment immediately following infection. The other question one might ask is, could some of those in the study already have been HIV controllers to begin with? While the genetic alleles commonly associated with HIV controllers was not found in these patients there may be other factors playing a role, which researchers now are trying to uncover.

Another study looked at two men who had been infected with HIV for many years, on suppressive antiretroviral therapy (ART), and who underwent treatment of lymphoma via an allogenic (meaning foreign, or from another donor) stem cell transplantation. Both patients received a milder form of chemotherapy, known as the conditioning regimen, prior to transplant, which allowed them to stay on their ART during and after the transplant. One patient was on Atripla, the other on Isentress/Truvada. HIV was detectable in their cells immediately after the transplant, but the transplanted donor cells replaced the patients' own lymphocytes over time. The amount of HIV DNA in their blood cells decreased and became undetectable, for up to two years now in one patient and three-and-a-half years in the other. CD4s declined in both patients initially, followed by a robust CD4 increase in one patient, and the stabilization and no further decline of CD4s in the other.Unlike Timothy Ray Brown, the "Berlin Patient," who received cells that were resistant to HIV because they lacked the CCR5 receptor, these patients received cells that were CCR5+. It is believed that the antiretroviral treatment protected the donor cells from becoming infected, leading one researcher to refer to it as "a form of PrEP [pre-exposure prophylaxis] at the cellular level." Further tissue sampling and analytic treatment interruption will need to be conducted to assess the full extent of the reduction of HIV in the reservoir.At a press conference held the same day these two studies were presented, David Margolis, M.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was asked by a reporter about the media's role in reporting on cure advances responsibly and accurately, while at the same time not giving too much hope or creating complacency."That's your job," said Margolis. "We are very careful about what we say [as researchers], and we've defined cure several different ways. Different kinds of cure and eradication mean different things to different people, and have different levels of value. Perhaps we should come up with a word, like 'complicated-eradication-chemo-immunotherapy,' to slow people down. But you can't argue with the goal and you can't get there without working on it -- and I can't say how long it will take."

Edited to add a word.

« Last Edit: November 30, 2012, 10:59:02 PM by Rev. Moon »

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"I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else."